Introduction

The transformation of global retail that has taken place over the past three decades is associated with changing gendered patterns of work. The previous two chapters explored this transformation empirically, fleshing out the commercial dynamics of global retailers and their supply networks as well as the role fragmented work plays in facilitating global value chains. Global retail expansion has fed on and fuelled the changing role of women who constitute the majority of their customers and increasingly juggle paid work with household responsibilities. Global sourcing provides the channel through which a wide range of goods is available at reasonably affordable prices on a JIT basis. Hundreds of millions of workers, a significant proportion female, are now deployed in labour-intensive global production, mainly in emerging and low-income countries.

This chapter focuses on the analytical dimension of the global retail transformation and associated changing gender patterns of work. The rise of global retail value chains challenges the underlying assumptions of much conventional analysis of markets, labour and gender. Prevailing analyses of production and trade have largely assumed that exchange takes place through markets within and between countries. Yet in global value chains, lead firms govern their supply chains without ownership, and coordinate production and trade across suppliers spanning multiple countries.

Prevailing analysis of labour has largely assumed the predominance of an employer–employee relationship regulated within national labour markets. Yet in retail value chains, lead firms that operate outside the national legal jurisdiction of suppliers and their workers can also influence supplier employment relations. Prevailing analysis of gender tends to assume a division of labour between the productive sphere of paid work and the reproductive sphere of unpaid work. Yet in retail value chains, the commercialization of household consumer goods and the feminization of employment are blurring the boundaries between productive and reproductive labour, as well as paid and unpaid work.

This chapter analytically addresses the core questions of this book: How are global retail value chains shaping gender patterns of work, and what are the gendered outcomes for workers? I draw on a combination of analytical approaches to investigate this question.

Rise of Global Retail

The rise of global retail has transformed the production, distribution and sale of food and consumer goods with significant consequences for the gender profile of work in the Global South. Global retailers play a key role in the provision and global sourcing of a wide range of consumer goods across national borders through global value chains (Coe and Wrigley 2009; Hamilton, Petrovic and Senauer 2011). Global value chains are summed up as ‘the full range of activities which are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the different phases of production (involving a combination of physical transformation and the input of various producer services), delivery to final consumers, and final disposal after use’ (Kaplinsky and Morris 2002, 8). Well established in North America and Europe, global retail is rapidly becoming more prevalent in emerging and lower-income economies (Reardon et al. 2003).

Women are drawn into global value chains as farmers, wage-workers, employees, buyers and customers (Dolan and Sorby 2003; Hale and Wills 2005). As retailers expand their market scope, they are commercializing many unpaid activities previously undertaken by women within households. Global retail and sourcing generate paid work for hundreds of millions of workers in emerging and low-income countries, drawing in a significant proportion of women with limited previous labour market access (ILO 2015b). Often they are involved in producing goods women had made or prepared in the home. Retail value chains link firms at each stage from production through distribution to final retail and final consumers (Kaplinsky and Morris 2002). A key argument of this book is that their growth has been based on commercialization of many activities previously undertaken, unpaid, by women in the home, helping to draw women into fragmented paid work in their production. They therefore blur traditional gendered boundaries between paid work in commercial production and unpaid work within households.

These processes play out differently across geographical locations, where gender norms shaping the division of labour and women's participation in productive and reproductive activities can vary greatly. Often, retail can disrupt long-established gender norms, but the outcomes for promoting gender equality appear mixed both across sectors and locations. Women workers are largely concentrated in low-wage, labour-intensive production.

Introduction

The rise of global retail value chains has played an important role in changing patterns of trade in traditional agricultural commodities such as tea, coffee and cocoa. However, the process of change has been complex and varied between products and countries, especially where smallholders play an important role in production. The world of large-scale retail, processing and agribusiness that dominate the commercial operation of global value chains is far removed from the reality of smallholder production characterized by low incomes, poverty, hardship and lack of resources. Significant tensions prevail between the commercial dynamics of processing, manufacture and distribution and retail, versus the societal dynamics of smallholder farming and rural communities that are deeply embedded in traditional norms and practices shaped by diverse local cultures and customs. Gender plays an important role in these tensions. Gender norms in traditional agriculture largely relegate women to a subordinate position. It has long been argued the important role women play in smallholder agricultural production is insufficiently recognized (Boserup 1970; Carr 2004; World Bank 2009; Quisumbing et al. 2014).

These tensions have intensified since the implementation of structural adjustment policies introduced by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s that liberalized trade and disbanded government agricultural support programmes in many developing countries. These facilitated increasing concentration among a small group of international food manufacturers and processors, while fragmented smallholders have struggled with the vagaries of international markets, declining agricultural prices, lack of resources and poor livelihoods (Robbins 2003; Oxfam 2018).

Problems have been coming to a head since the 2000s, with rising concerns whether the supply of quality agricultural commodities would be sufficient to meet rising global demand and future sustainability of small-scale agriculture. Researchers and policymakers have paid increasing attention to the challenges of incorporating smallholders in global value chains and strategies that can enable their participation (Dolan and Humphrey 2000; Gibbon and Ponte 2005; Vorley et al. 2007; Lee, Gereffi and Beauvais 2010; Reardon, Timmer and Minten 2010). International food manufacturers and processors that once relied on markets to generate some agricultural commodities are now increasingly engaged in sustainability initiatives that extend across their value chains to support small-scale farmers. Some incorporate a gender dimension, as recognition of women's contribution to quality production has grown (Utz 2009; Chan 2010; Fairtrade 2015).

Books are often the product of a long journey, and this one is no exception. In the 19901990s, much was being made of the ‘Chilean economic miracle’ resulting from trade liberalization implemented under the Pinochet dictatorship. As a postgraduate student of international trade and development with an interest in gender and labour in Chile, I wanted to examine the costs of this ‘miracle’ in the fruit export sector for the large female temporary labour force (las temporeras) employed each season. As part of this research, I undertook focus group discussions with groups of women fruit workers in the lower reaches of the Andes north of Santiago. This encounter dispelled many naïve assumptions I had started out with and highlighted the complexities of globalization for women workers.

Unsurprisingly, I found that, during the fruit season, las temporeras endured exceptionally long hours, with poor pay and few rights. In my discussions with workers, I enquired about their ‘bad’ experiences working in multinational and domestically owned export companies. However, I soon learnt from workers that, despite many problems, the work also provided them with economic independence relative to their previous situation. I met some very forthright temporeras, one of whom forcefully said, ‘We have always worked hard. NOW we are being paid for it.’ They preferred working for multinationals because they offered better pay and conditions than domestically owned companies. From then on, I have been more careful in my research to investigate both the challenges and opportunities for women working in global export production.

This same research also opened my eyes to the changing dynamics of trade, which conventional economics and political economy at the time were not addressing. This came about initially through a misunderstanding. My learnt Castilian was a potential barrier to comprehending the local dialect of workers. A couple of times in one focus group, workers mentioned ‘la visita de tesco’. When I enquired what ‘tesco’ meant, I was met with disbelief and laughter—they were referring to the UK supermarket Tesco. I was amazed that temporary workers in the foothills of the Andes were aware of a UK supermarket located on a different continent.

Corporate Social Responsibility and the challenges of business–society interplays

The recent US$66 billion merger of Bayer and Monsanto, which gave birth to a multinational biotech giant endowed with unprecedented power over food production and food security of the human kind, has raised intense controversies all over the globe. While some protagonists emphasized revenue prospects and the ability of such an entity to help feed the world's population, others described the merger as the creation of a Frankenstein-like entity, which is set to exploit peasants, destroy ecosystems, and put public health at risk for the sake of profit. Big oil companies, which supply society with energy and provide income to hundreds of thousands of people, have faced similar critics because of environmental pollution (for example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; climate change) and instances of collaboration with the police and military forces of autocratic regimes to repress protest (for example, Shell in Nigeria; Total in Myanmar). Leading providers of financial services, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, also raised controversies as some of their highly profitable activities contributed to the global economic and financial crisis that erupted in 2007–2008. The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in 2013, which claimed the lives of more than a thousand workers from the garment industry, is a further case where profit-making business is entangled with competing collective values and interests.

These diverse cases epitomize structural tensions characterizing ‘business– society’ interplays. In fact, over the course of the past two centuries, companies have gradually developed into a core institution of modern society, and their profit-making business activities have had both positive and negative consequences for the life chances of billions of people. In the economic domain, companies have provided income to a growing number of private capital owners, as well as to waged and salaried workers who now represent 55 per cent of the 3.2 billion people employed worldwide. Companies also constitute a key income source for governments, for international organizations, and for a large number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Besides, by developing innovative products and supplying markets with goods and services, companies have contributed to shaping modern living conditions and lifestyles, which are valued by billions of moneyed consumers and aspiring poor persons.

Ambiguities in CSR public policies

Since the early 2000s, political systems have gained increasing significance in terms of their role in the (re)production of the intermediary institution of CSR. Concretely, a growing number of national states and intergovernmental bodies from around the globe have formulated public policies that formally aim to promote and shape the CSR behaviour of companies. European countries such as the United Kingdom and France have been forerunners in this emerging policy field, for instance, with the setting up of a British Ministry for CSR in 2000, and the law Nouvelles Régulations Économiques of 2001 which requires companies listed on the CAC40 index to issue a yearly CSR report. Most other members of the European Union have followed this lead, encouraged by a series of European CSR policies and strategy documents, including the Green Paper ‘Promoting a European Framework for Corporate Social Responsibility’ of 2001, the document ‘A Renewed EU Strategy 2011–2014 for Corporate Social Responsibility’ that was released ten years later, and the Directive 2014/95/EU on non-financial reporting. Outside Europe, CSR policies have also spread in most OECD countries, as well as in numerous emerging and developing countries (for example, India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Vietnam, Mexico, Egypt, Mozambique).

As part of a broader trend towards collaborative forms of governance, which rely on issue-centred and efficiency-driven partnerships between public and private actors, these various CSR policies formally aim to engage companies in societal problem-solving. By promoting and structuring CSR among targeted companies, for instance, through norms (for example, laws, guidelines, standards) and the provision of dedicated resources (for example, knowledge platforms, toolkits), governments seek to increase economic responsiveness beyond the level that would be reached if CSR was left to the work of market forces and managerial risk-management.

The driving forces and the impact of this growing ‘government of self-regulation’ are not straightforward, as the position of states vis-à-vis CSR is deeply ambiguous. As emphasized in the first chapter, historically, CSR has been closely associated with voluntarism as an alternative to state intervention. Business ethics was to a large extent about minimizing legally binding regulation of economic activity by putting the virtues of self-regulation forward. Following this lead, the American pioneers of CSR used it as a means to contain state intervention: business corporations, rather than state authorities, were to decide how commercial operations should mind the public interest.

Introduction

The transformation of global retail value chains since the 1990s has been associated with significant changes in how people shop and goods are sourced. Women constitute the majority of retail customers purchasing many goods critical to household and family welfare. Gender norms have long shaped women's primary role as in the home, including the unpaid production of food and clothing for household consumption. However, as more and more women have entered the labour force, they have combined paid work with household and caring roles. Global retailers have facilitated these changes by expanding the availability of a wide array of commercially produced consumer goods at affordable prices. These include processed foods, ready-made garments and other household convenience items. Trends that first developed in North America and Europe have subsequently been replicated in middle- and lower-income countries.

Underpinning these changes has been a revolution in the operations of global retailers, with increasing dominance by a smaller number of companies. They monitor and help shape changing consumer trends through the application of information technology (IT) and marketing. They control and coordinate global value chains from the point of production through distribution to final consumers, facilitating supply of a vast range of goods cheaply on a just-in-time (JIT) basis. This has involved a transformation in global sourcing, changing how goods are produced, procured and distributed globally. Global sourcing has expanded production of manufactured and food products within many developing countries. This has generated a large feminized labour force to facilitate low-cost commercial production of consumer goods retailed. Trends in the Global North are increasingly replicated in the Global South.

This chapter provides an overview of changing gender patterns of work as well as dynamics of global retail value chains in the post-World War II period. It examines how global retail expansion has adapted to and helped shape changing gender patterns of work. It explores the retail revolution and global sourcing that underpins the provision of affordable commercially produced goods. Finally, it examines the commercial mantra of cost, quality and speed of delivery as key requirements of supply and purchasing practices of global retailers. This informs an examination in the next chapter of the implications for the feminization and fragmentation of work in production of consumer goods and gender profile of work across retail value chains.

Introduction

Economic and social downgrading and upgrading are complex processes in global retail value chains that source from agriculture. Production is embedded within traditional norms and institutions of rural society that shape commercial and social interaction in differing ways depending on product and local context. Chapter 5 examined the gendered complexities of embeddedness in relation to smallholder cocoa farming in Ghana. However, as this chapter will examine, the transition from smallholder to larger-scale commercial farming involving wage labour can also be fraught with downgrading and upgrading tensions that are gendered. Some groups experience significant challenges or total value chain exclusion, yet for others new opportunities for value chain inclusion arise. Who loses and benefits is a gendered process often overlooked in the literatures on agricultural smallholders and wage-workers. Smallholder exclusion from global value chains affects men as the recognized farmers, as well as their households, including women who have long played an unrecognized role as unpaid contributing family labour. In larger commercial farming, women play a more visible role as independent wage labour. Nevertheless, they are often concentrated in insecure temporary and seasonal work that also exposes them to downgrading pressures as suppliers manage risks and costs in supermarket value chains. Yet some women workers are able to benefit from economic upgrading involving higher quality production/processing to attain social upgrading with improved conditions and rights.

Fresh fruit and vegetables provide an important example of the gendered complexities of downgrading and upgrading. The expansion of global retail value chains (particularly cool chain innovation) has played an important role in generating the availability of fresh and processed horticultural produce all year round at affordable prices. Some southern hemisphere countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have been well positioned to take advantage of increased global demand for horticultural exports, particularly during the winter season in the Global North. However, this also exposes them to supermarket requirements on cost, quality and delivery schedules that put pressure on smallholders and smaller or less-efficient farmers engaged in retail value chains. In some countries retail pressures have led to a decline in engagement by smallholders and smaller farmers, with expansion of larger-scale commercial production and processing, but in others smallholders retain a foothold in value chains (Dolan and Humphrey 2000; Vorley et al. 2007).

CSR as a product of functional differentiation

A key hypothesis in CSR research based on SST is that the CSR phenomenon exists in relation to a much broader phenomenon, which is the historical development of modern society as a world society based primarily on functional differentiation. To grasp this idea of functional differentiation, one has to consider a broad overview of modern world history.

Before functional differentiation unfolded, western Europeans were living in a feudal social order. This order was characterized by the primacy of hierarchical (also called ‘stratified’) differentiation: in most domains of social life, people's life chances and ways of life were conditioned by their inherited position in a stratified structure, which stretched from royal families and the high nobility down to families of landless peasants, vagrants, and serfs. From the sixteenth century onwards, this stratified order was progressively disrupted by the formation of functionally differentiated subsystems – a contingent evolutionary process that gained momentum in the late eighteenth century and that reached far into the twentieth century.

To illustrate the emergence of functional differentiation, the monetization of the economy and the development of markets increasingly decoupled access to ownership from one's inherited social position in a hierarchical order. The rise of constitutional states transferred political decision-making from the heights of royal dynasties and aristocratic families to self-organized political systems, in which people are included in a political demos under conditions of formal equality through the status of citizenship. Religious or natural laws gave way to a system of positive law, whose legitimacy is based on internal procedures and rules. Science progressively asserted itself as a system of knowledge production that is guided by the autonomous pursuit of truth. Religion receded from its role as an all-encompassing provider of order in society, to constitute itself as a distinct sphere of social life that entails multiple belief-systems.

This gradual process of functional differentiation, whose unfolding has been much less neat and linear than it appears in the sketch above, has participated in the constitution of a contemporary ‘world society’ by way of an increasing globalization of function systems.